Changes You Can Make to Improve Your Website

You already know that having a website is extremely important for businesses today. Even a small business is expected to have a presence online, but just because you used one of those free website builders and have something up online doesn’t necessarily mean it’s helping your business bring in new customers. In fact, if you have a poorly designed or completely un-maintained website, it could be harming your marketing efforts. Here are a few changes you can make to create a better user experience (UX) on your website.

1: Make it Readable

If you have thousands of words crammed on every page of your website, with text that stretches from the left margin to the right and top to bottom, you are probably driving people away from your site. Review your website and change the formats and text to make it easy for browsers to consume the information. That includes:

Adding white space

Adding photos and icons that visually break up the text

Using bullets or other formatting to draw attention to important content

Not trying to cram all your content on the top of the page

Adding navigation items to break up long text on pages

In addition to looking cleaner and making it easier to read, consumers view websites that effectively implement white space as more modern, fresh, and open.

2: Improve Page Loading Speeds

In today’s fast-paced world, consumers have little patience for companies that can’t keep up. If you have elements on the page that slow down loading times, or you host your site on a slow server, people are navigating away from your site (called “bouncing”) before they even get to see it. In fact, studies have shown that a two-second delay can increase your bounce rate by as much as 87 percent.

If you know your page is slow, talk to an experienced digital marketing agency to find out what changes you could make on the back end to speed up the front end of the site.

3: Help Users Understand What to Do

The point of having a website is reaching your customers so they take some type of action and want to do business with you. Users respond to clear calls to action, and easy-to-read text and visual cues that help them navigate a site. That means using contrasting colors, creating urgency with a timeline, and using words that encourage action, such as “Get Started Today” or “Learn More”.

4: Use Visuals Wisely

People love visuals, and often use them to judge whether or not they like a website (and by extension, a company). You should be including things like photos, videos, colors, and icons on your site. However, you need to make sure you’re using them appropriately. Stock photography, while convenient, can come across as untrustworthy and generic; a poorly done video could make your company look amateurish. Make sure if you use these methods, they are high quality, original photos and your website designer or marketing agency has properly sized them to load quickly.

5: Check Your SEO

Finally, make sure your website is working on the back end so users (and search engines) have a good experience. That means checking for 404 errors (pages that no longer exist on your site), optimizing headers for SEO, and designing a site that is mobile-responsive for smartphones and tablets. If that all sounds like a foreign language to you, talk to a marketing agency that specializes in website design and SEO.

Use these tips to make sure your website is performing as the marketing tool you envisioned when you first created it. If it’s not, call a website design and marketing agency today to get it up to speed.